He said: "The most demoralising thing I've ever had to do was queue up at the job center and have people look at me saying, 'What a failure'.

"When you've lost the ability to do the job you've always done, it's an incredible stab in the back to find people are actually laughing at you.

"It's why I don't make a lot of effort to talk to the press these days - it can be more trouble than it's worth. I was never attacked physically but I had plenty of people come up to me and be particularly offensive."

He added: "If you've got a roof over your head and food on the table I don't know how anyone can be truly unhappy."

Rik Waller later appeared on the 2002 series Celebrity Fit Club, where he was kicked out after being caught binge eating.

He later took part in Channel 5's Back to Reality in 2004, a series which put together various stars of different reality shows in a Big Brother-style house.